In the 2006 election (another historic one, you may recall) the Federal Election Assistance Commission says only about 30 percent of overseas military absentee ballots were counted.

Imagine that. If, say, 10 percent of ballots were disallowed at a particular polling place, lawyers would undoubtedly deploy in force and angry lawmakers would demand hearings. But 70 percent of military ballots go uncounted, and nothing much happens.

Sure, the Pentagon invested $25 million trying to set up an online voting system for our troops, but critics managed to shoot down that idea. Too vulnerable to fraud, they said. Not at all like our flawless election system here at home.

Oh, and apropos of nothing, the non-partisan election board in Lake County, Ind., recently stopped processing the 5,000 voter registration forms filed by the “community organization” group ACORN. The first 2,100 of the applications the board studied were all phony, and board members saw no reason to assume the next half would be legit. “All the signatures looked exactly the same,” Ruthann Hoagland, a Republican on the board, told CNN. “Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same.”

ACORN has worked its magic elsewhere. “Over the past four years, a dozen states have investigated complaints of fraudulent registrations filed by ACORN,” CNN reports. Undoubtedly the organization has managed to get plenty of fraudulent voters on to the rolls, voters who will be allowed to cast a vote that actually counts in November. And that’s more than can be said for most of our troops overseas.

This election could spell “a difference between staying in and pulling out,” Army Capt. Holly Landes told the Associated Press. She’s currently deployed in Iraq. “So it would be nice if it were a little easier and [troops] had more confidence in the system.” Indeed it would.

Maybe our troops would even make a difference by, say, doing what at least one columnist plans to do: Write in a vote for David Petraeus. The General’s already done what many said two years ago was impossible: he’s led our military to the brink of victory in Iraq. In Washington he might even be able to “bring people together” and “get things done,” two other clichés that seem in short supply these days.